Full Pundit: Tom Mulcair's national unity gamesmanship

Full Pundit: Tom Mulcair's national unity gamesmanship

A slight clarificationL. Ian MacDonald, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, accuses NDP leader Tom Mulcair of “playing a double game” with his proposed changes to the Clarity Act: By demanding a crystal-clear question (like “Should Quebec separate from Canada and become a sovereign country?”) that he knows would never appear on a ballot, he’s trying to look like a tough-guy federalist; but by demanding a 50%-plus-one Oui vote threshold to trigger negotiations, he’s playing to his new Quebec base. And MacDonald is right, of course. But we have a hard time getting too upset about it. 50%-plus-one isn’t what the Supreme Court said, but it’s not the most outrageous position in the world. If a no-hope private member’s bill helps keep Quebecers onside with a federalist party with a proven separatist-fighter at the helm, we can live with it.

So can the National Post‘s John Ivison. He certainly has “reservations about the NDP position.” But at least, as he says, the NDP is no longer clinging to the ridiculous fiction that 50%-plus-one was in fact compatible with the Clarity Act. Yes, as Justin Trudeau says, it is “a careful political calculation to appease the strong nationalist base in Quebec.” But as Ivison says, “so what? Parties, with the possible exception of the Liberals, do things that are popular with their voting base.” (Zing!) Furthermore, Ivison thinks Mulcair’s on to something with this 50%-plus-one business. At least it gives us a number, unlike the Clarity Act. And if it’s good enough for the Scots, he asks — noting Scotland’s painful experimentation with other thresholds — why is it not for us?

“At a stroke, [the NDP] proposal breathes new life into the idea that one day, some day, La Patrie can be realized,” Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt counters, arguing there was no need for Mulcair to go where he went. We agree it would have been preferable if Mulcair had just waved away the Bloc Québécois bill that would repeal the Clarity Act altogether like a fruit fly. (The Toronto Star‘s editorialists note that their demand he repudiate the Sherbrooke Declaration was very rudely rebuffed.) But 50%-plus-one is a common position even among Quebec federalists, like Jean Charest, never mind soft-nationalists. We lived with it before; Canada would be no closer to dissolution if it were imposed upon us again (which it won’t be). Den Tandt thinks it all proves Mulcair is purely a provincially minded leader, and not a nationally minded one. Maybe. But considering the state of the Liberals and Conservatives in Quebec, he might be the best we’ve got.

It is certainly bloody rich, however, as the MontrealGazette‘s editorialists say, for Mulcair to accuse the Liberals of some kind of chicanery on this matter. The Clarity Act was “a much needed and sensible defence of Canadian interest,” they say, “after a referendum in which the separatist government of the day came within a few thousand votes of a simple majority in favour of secession accompanied by a continuing partnership, something that implied Quebecers could enjoy the benefits of Confederation even after leaving it.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Ottawa … as unexciting as Stephen Harper’s day on Twitter was, the Star‘s Tim Harper wonders if it reflects a realization that, as his government ages, the Prime Minister’s not-so-popular personal brand might become a bit of a problem. If so, he says, it’s a hell of a job to fix it. “Unbuttoning the most buttoned down prime minister in recent memory is a tall order,” Harper writes. “Kentucky Fried Chicken can change to KFC and Kraft Dinner can become KD, but they are still fried chicken and macaroni and cheese.”

Liberal leadership candidate George Takach, writing in the Post, decries all this speculation about his party “co-operating” with the New Democrats or Greens as “loser talk” that “plays right into the hands of Harper and Thomas Mulcair, as they co-operate to try to polarize Canadian politics to appeal to the extremes.” (Yeah, look at Mulcair out therebeing all extreme and stuff! For shame, sir!) Well, that won’t happen on George Takachs’ watch. No, sirree. The Liberals are great, they will rise again, and when they do it’ll be George Takach at the helm!

Colby Cosh of Maclean’s takes an interesting look at Saskatchewan’s contentious redrawing of its electoral map as one that reflects the urban-rural split we’re used to seeing in other provinces. But one member of the commission, who happens to be president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, was so attached to the old “pie-slice” map, on which there were no exclusively urban ridings, that he refused to sign a unanimous report. “This is thought to be the first time that a Canadian boundaries commission has split irreconcilably in this way,” Cosh reports. “It’s a nasty failure, since the whole point of a boundaries commission is to use logic to arrive at a broadly acceptable nonpartisan consensus.”